Classic Character Studies

When I want to learn how to draw classic characters, I don't only look at the model sheets but it's a good place to start. I try to find the earliest incarnations first.
After studying the models I then also look at animators' drawings, storyboard drawings, toys and comic book or comic strip drawings too.
I look for the most appealing incarnations of the characters and try to incorporate them all into my understanding of the charcters.
Here I tested myself to see what I remembered and understood about Huck. I got the angle at the top of his head backwards and will correct it next time I draw him from memory. (Hopefully) I remembered that his butt is lower than his belly - very important to his personality.
Model sheets are only the jumping off point for characters. If you slavishly just try to imitate a handful of model sheet poses, you will inevitable lose a generation or more. Each good artist who adds poses and expressions to a character enriches the overall character and that's worth absorbing - and ultimately adding to yourself.

After studying some early HB model sheets, story sketches and comic illustrations, I tried my hand at sketching some thumbnail gag ideas to see if I could get a grip on the character. Huck is very hard to caricature. He has too many subtle angles.

WHEN HB CHARACTERS SHOP FOR CLOTHES

Forcing New Information To Stick In The Brain

I copied a couple of my HB Rubber toys to see what I could glean for future use. (HB characters make the best toys)
I took two characters and turned them to see what general characteristics they had in common,
and what features were specific to the particular design of each. Whatever they had in common might tell me about what happens to cartoon faces when rotated - and more, what happens when toys of cartoon faces turn in space. It's even more 3d than a model sheet turnaround.

TESTING MY MEMORY

A couple days later, I tested myself to see if I actually learned anything. Could I reproduce anything I studied? If not, then the study would be for naught.
I also wanted to know not just how to reproduce superficially something visual that I memorized - but more important, did I understand what I supposedly learned? The eye copies what something looks like on the surface, but it takes the brain to comprehend it. That's the trickier part for me. Why does something look the way it does? - not just what does it look like?

crappy one

CHECKING, REDRAWING, CORRECTING BAD MEMORY

I absorbed some of what I studied, but not completely, so I went back and drew the toy again, this time trying to get a more accurate copy and to ram the info into my brain.

Could I make a drawing that feels like a toy and not just a 2 dimensional drawing of the characters as they appear in cartoons? I'd have to have an understanding of what makes a character look like a toy.

I tried drawing toy versions of toys that don't exist to test my understanding.

They aren't exaggerated enough yet to satisfy my goal.

Plastic Toys Have Seams

Then I tried drawing what the characters might look like as plastic toys, which have their own unique properties.

WHY ISN'T THERE A BOO BOO RUBBER TOY??: MY SUGGESTION

It is my opinion that study and drawing practice is a good thing - but only if you force yourself to try to understand what you are studying - and then to apply it to original drawings that aren't copies of something right in front of your face.

Some day Bill and Joe will call from Heaven and let me design a bunch of Hanna Barbera toys - and in the wrong colors. Then all my studies will have had a noble purpose.

Stiff Warm Ups and Studies

I am slowly, painstakingly trying to beat new information into my brain.
2 things I have been working on are facial structure and legs - with attention to balanced poses and how they work. Like many cartoonists, my eye lies to me a lot and I naturally draw things out of proportion.
I think I am just beginning to understand how the major facial muscles and features interrelate with each other. The curves all weave in and out of each other in an organized, logical pattern. For example, the cheek starts under the eye socket, puffs out and then weaves into the smile, then reverses direction and aims into the top of the chin under the lip. I have been faking it for decades, as many cartoonists do. One day I might actually do it from memory where it makes some sense.
I missed it in the drawings below.

Legs Feet BalanceAnother mystery that has plagued me forever, is how to draw natural and balanced female poses. It seems an immense and complex problem. Just drawing a leg or a foot in even one position is difficult, but then to understand how they look from every angle, and in what degree of tension...

I find that it's not enough to just draw and copy things. I have to try to understand the why of what things look like. Otherwise I am just making superficial copies of a specific pose without being able to draw other poses later.
So when I am copying, I look for knowledge and understanding. Not just the specific shapes I am copying, but the general forms and relationships causing the specific shapes. I try to find things that make some sense and then write them down in the hopes I remember them and can put them to use later.
I don't have the greatest memory, so I have to do lots and lots of drawings, studies and analysis. I need my own personal tutor who'll fix all my drawings and tel me exactly what's wrong with them and correct them in front of me.

I envy the artists who seem to understand the sense of anatomy and perspective through instinct and feeling. There aren't many. Frank Frazetta's one of them. He has some otherwordly gift. - Owen Fitzgerald's another. These two artists don't just copy and repeat stock cartoon shapes and poses; they customize every pose and angle to the scene.

I'm not sure why I want to know all this stuff. There are many famous cartoonists who had successful careers and made entertaining cartoons without ever doing natural poses - even cartoonists who are renowned for their human drawings - like Al Capp and Milton Caniff. Don't get me wrong; they are both talented storytellers and stylists, but like many cartoonists - stiff.

A Classic Cartoon Face In Real Life

Ingrid Bergman has a great facial structure. She has very strong defined bones and then really distinct cheeks, lips and nose and eyes sticking out of, wrapped around and sitting within them.
Unfortunately, in these glamor photos you don't see them quite as well as you can in her movies. I think the publicity department went out of its way to try to hide her most interesting features.
She has a profile that's very exaggerated.
It's like her lower face sticks out way past her forehead.She has a long nose that sticks out and up at a cartoony angle. Again, it's not as evident in these publicity shots.It reminds me of the way Owen Fitzerald drew Starlet O'hara in the 40s comics.I wish I had this comic. Someone scan it and post it!
They also seem to be hiding her overbite. Her upper teeth really stick out and overlap her lower lip.

I love the color in the old photos. Colors seemed to be a lot richer back then. They especially had a way of bringing out fleshtones. Probably with an airbrush, but even in the color movies they did it.Modern movie photography (from the 70s to today) and even publicity shots are dull, bland and flat. I guess anti-glamor is the fashion.

Anyway, Ingrid has a great face to draw but I'll want to do it from a dvd where I can freeze frame the most interesting angles and expressions.

Another thing they tried to hide in the 40s publicity shots was the fact that she has a relatively small forehead compared to her cheeks and jaw. Not what you would think are normal proportions for a pretty girl, but it works.
You can see it in this early photo.
She has exaggerated "nordic features". Can I say that?


Her face got more interesting as she got a bit older. I love how she looks in the Italian films like Europa 51. Maybe losing some baby fat brought out her dynamic skull stucture.

L.O. 6: Analyze and Check your Layout against the storyboard. a sample lesson from secret cartoon college - using words to analyze an image

Let's just look at the poses of the 2 humans...

Now you should analyze what's different with this copy and correct it before cleaning the whole picture up

___________________
Knowing what to fix and what to leave alone and what to push further

This is all very tricky stuff but here's the goal:


Each artist in a cartoon production line has is or her specialty.

A storyboard artists creates the continuity and some acting and posing, and if he is good at it some rough composition.


The layout artist polishes the poses, draws the backgrounds and tightens everything - then adds some breakdown poses.

The animator moves the layout poses and adds more breakdowns and subtleties.

Each artist must take what the person before him/her has created and make decisions:

What are the good parts I should preserve? The essence.

What is a mistake or rushed part that I should fix?

Is there anything I can do to push the idea, to make it stronger? But not until you at least preserve the good parts you have been given by the director and the artist before you. You can't tone it down.

This calls not only for skill, creativity, but a clear thinking practical, analytic brain.


You don't want to just throw away what some other poor artist or writer has done just because it's your turn to draw the scene within your particular department. You yourself wouldn't want the next person in line to do that to your own chunk of the show, right? Well they do it all the time - except at my studios if I am watching.


So we have to learn the difference between arbitrarily changing things and taking the good essence of an idea and polishing it and pushing it.
Step by step all through the production of a cartoon.


This is somewhat personally limiting (and frustrating) at first, but once you get it, it will free you to achieve personal creativity on a whole new level you never thought possible. It's balancing control and common purpose with individuality.

Analysis is not creative. It's your brain helping your magical talent get a job done best.